Chapter IX: Part II: The Book Open (2)

Ruey knew why it "paid," though she didn't tell her husband just then; she should never forget that night, nor the plain woman with the old bonnet who carried the untroubled face and the worn book. Deep in her heart a new purpose had taken root; an ambition not only to make cakes like Philip's mother, but to attain to that blessed something which made this other woman so different from those about her.

FAITH AND GASOLINE.

Mrs. Faith Vincent was crying; there was no denying it, veritable tears were in her eyes and on her cheeks all the time she was bathing the plump limbs of her baby and robing her in dainty garments of flannel and embroidery. Then she struggled through the notes of a sad lullaby, and now the long lashes lay quietly on the pretty cheek, and the fair young mamma was free to lay her head on the side of the crib and indulge in a good cry.

The clue to all this trouble was condensed in a sentence that the young husband let fall just as he left for his business a few moments before--"I see no other way, my dear: you will be obliged to take baby and go to Uncle Joshua's for the summer. The extreme heat will come on now very soon, and then neither you nor Daisy will be able to endure it in this room."

Now that would not be a very appalling statement to make to most wives, that they must pack up and get out of the hot dusty city to a farmhouse in the country, even though they did leave their husbands sweltering behind, but there were several points to be taken into consideration in this case. In the first place, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent had not yet learned how to maintain a separate existence. Life apart from each other was a tame, spiritless thing, simply to be endured, not enjoyed; then, too, Uncle Joshua's home was not a Paradise, although he and Aunt Patty were kind and pleasant. Faith had vivid memories of a few weeks spent there soon after her marriage. They lived on their farm, two simple-minded old people, spending the evening of their lives in quiet happiness; but the place was dreary, remote from any town or neighbours. She had found it pleasant when her husband was with her and the two took long rambles, or spent the day under the trees, reading and talking, but how could she endure it alone? rising with the birds to an early breakfast, then an interminable day stretching before her, the long afternoon of silence broken only by the click of Aunt Patty's knitting-needles, the ticking of the old clock, and the hum of the bees; for these old people had lived too long in quiet on these silent hills to make much conversation. She could not see herself going through the same monotonous round as each long day dragged its slow length, while miles stretched between her and her beloved, toiling on in the distant city. The dreary separation--that was the hard part of it, after all.

It was just two years since Frank Vincent brought home his bride. He had succeeded in securing rooms in a pleasant boarding-house in one of the wide, airy streets of the city; he felt justified in going to the utmost of his means in providing an attractive home; for his Faith had been delicately reared by a wealthy uncle who had frowned upon the love-making of the young bookkeeper, handsome, intelligent, and with unblemished reputation though he was, and held a good position in one of the largest and oldest firms in the city. The uncle had more ambitious plans for his favourite niece. He did not forbid the marriage, but gave Faith to understand that if she persisted in marrying a poor man, when a good half million awaited her acceptance, she did it at her own peril, not a penny of his should go to eke out the scanty living of a poor clerk. The end of it all was a quiet wedding one morning in her uncle's parlour, and a hasty flitting away of the young couple--away from ominous looks and cold politeness, out into their own bright world, where no dark shadows in the shape of grim mercenary uncles should ever cross their path.

It was not without many misgivings that the young husband conducted his wife to her apartments, for neat and pretty though they were, they were in marked contrast with the roomy, elegant mansion where she had spent her life, and so was the noisy, dusty city with the beautiful, quiet old town where trees and flowers and birds and pure air and room to breathe in, made existence doubly delightful. The anxiety was needless; never was child more pleased with play-house than the young bride with her new home.

Life glided peacefully on for many months, then the clouds began to gather in the sky of the financial world. Business men were anxious, and retrenchment was the order of the day. Among others to draw in sail was the well-established firm whom Mr. Vincent had served for many years. The salaries of their employe's were cut down, in some instances to a mere pittance. Upon none did the blow fall more heavily than these two inexperienced ones who had made no provision for any such change in their affairs. They were dismayed; Mr. Vincent tried in vain to secure some more lucrative position, but he soon began to feel that he was most fortunate in such times to have any assured income. The outgo was greater than the income, and it was plain that they must seek a less expensive home. They made many trips to the suburbs in the hope of obtaining board at a price that would be within their means, in some pleasant rural home, but no such home opened its doors; evidently the dwellers in the suburbs, when they did take boarders, meant to make it "pay." Then they searched the papers and read all the advertisements under the head of "Boarding" within the city. They climbed long flights of stairs, and interviewed landladies, and looked at rooms with the customary faded carpets and shabby wall-paper and musty smell, in narrow streets withal, that seemed to Faith like prisons. In vain they tried to make their tastes and their purse agree. They had to come to it, a third-story room, faded carpet, shabby paper, and hard bed. It was a great change, especially when they descended three dark stairways into a comfortless basement dining-room, and were served with sour bread and strong butter, muddy coffee and tough, steak. It tried their fortitude sometimes severely, but they were young and brave; they had each other and dear little Daisy; that was almost enough for this world.

One can't have everything, so Faith stirred the fire and put a bright spread on the bare table, and another bit of bright colour on the wooden rocking-chair, so that if they had not been forced to live by eating, things would not have been so bad after all. Spring, though, brought troubles; the sun shining squarely upon them through the winter had served to brighten up things and save coal; but now he became an enemy, pouring his fierce rays nearly all the long day into the two windows, old paper shades filled with pin holes the only protection against him. Large companies of flies, too, arrived daily, and evidently came to stay; the butter turned to oil; eatables grew unpalatable; the whole house seemed stuffy and unendurable.

It was one of those warm spring mornings when vital energies flag, that Mr. and Mrs. Vincent toiled up the third flight of stairs; the halls filled with execrable odours of fried ham and cheap coffee; each busy with their own thoughts, possibly of green fields, apple-blossoms, spring violets, tables with damask and silver, cool, inviting rooms, and other equally tantalising suggestions. Faith, at the top, panting and pale as any lily, drew from her husband the exclamation:

"My dear, you cannot endure it any longer; something must be done."

That something seemed all the more imperative, since Daisy was beginning to droop and have feverish days over the advent of each little white tooth. Many perplexed conferences followed.

"You see," said Mr. Vincent, trying to speak cheerfully, "one of us orphans ought to have married some one who had a father and mother, and an old homestead to go to in an emergency like this. As it is, I do not see any other way but for you to take baby and go to my uncle Joshua's for the summer. You will be made welcome, at least, and have good food and good air."

"What if we go to housekeeping in a small way?" Faith suggested.

"It would have to be in a very small way indeed," laughed Frank. "Why, the birds of the air have more to set up housekeeping with than we; they have furnished rooms, rent free. Think of rent, furniture, and all the pots and kettles and pans that housekeeping requires, besides wages to a girl. Never do, wine, my salary wouldn't cover. I have often heard people say it was much cheaper to board than to keep house."

"But we might take a small house in the suburbs and furnish it by degrees, and I could do my own work," persisted Faith.

"My poor little white lily," said Frank, "you know not whereof you speak, Think of a little hot house, you broiling over a cook-stove, and baby crying for your care; besides, my dear, you are not accustomed to work. I shouldn't wonder, now, if I knew just about as, much as you do about cooking. I think I can see you with blistered fingers and aching head, studying cook-books. No, Faith, we shall be obliged to live in two places this summer, I fear. I know it will be lonely for you at uncle Joshua's, but for your own sake and the dear baby's, it must be done. Let us be of good cheer, and perhaps by fall business will revive and my salary be increased, or I can get a better position. Now good-bye, my blossoms, I must be gone," and he sprang away down the stairs hastily, lest Faith should see that his courage was more than half assumed, for the prospect before him was dismal in the extreme.

What Mrs. Vincent did when her husband left her we already know, yet she was not one to sit down in weeping despair before a difficulty until every energy had been put forth to remove it. She sat long and pondered the question; no light came, although she bent her white brows into a deep frown in perplexed thought.

"If I could only keep house," she mused. "Frank imagines I know nothing of cooking. I'd just like to have him eat some bread and puffy biscuits of my making. I am so glad I never told him that I took lessons of Dinah all one winter before we were married. I'll surprise that boy some day with my knowledge. If it were not for the horrid heat of the cook-stove, I know I could keep house nicely, and save money, too, I dare say; but, my head never would endure a hot kitchen, I suppose."

Just here the clock chimed out ten, reminding Faith of an engagement at the dressmaker's. Leaving Daisy with her young nurse, she was soon on her way, not to "Madame Aubrey's," but to plain Mrs. Macpherson's, who lived up two flights of stairs, and was nevertheless "a good fitter," and kept her rooms and herself as neat as wax.

While Faith waited, and the busy shears slipped and snipped her wrapper, she had time to look about her. The rooms wore such a pleasant, home-like air; they were cool and comfortable-looking, and not a fly to be seen. Faith, reared to the finest and best of everything, now looked with almost covetous eyes on this poor, plain home.

"What a cosy place you have here, Mrs. Macpherson," she said, and she wearily leaned her head back in the comfortable old rocking-chair, newly covered with chintz. "It is so nice, I would like to stay."

Mrs. Macpherson glanced up in surprise, the tones were such tired, sad ones. She noticed for the first time the dark rings under Faith's eyes, and the eyes themselves looked suspiciously red. Her motherly heart went out to the "poor young thing" straightway.

"Something troubles you, child," she said, "or you don't feel well. Can't I help you?"

The tender tones almost made the tears come anew; and Faith, contrary to her reticent nature, found herself telling kind-hearted Mrs. Macpherson just what did trouble her.

"Poor dear!" Mrs. Macpherson said, "that is hard; if I can't help you, I know one who can. Why don't you go straight to the dear Lord and tell him all about it? You see everything is at his disposal. You know the way to him, don't you?"

Faith nodded assent, and then said despairingly, "It never seemed to me that God would condescend to think about the small affairs of our everyday life."

"But, Mrs. Vincent, you surely read in the Word how he numbers the hairs of our heads, and he says himself if he gives thought to such little things as lilies and grass, he'll surely look after us. Doesn't the Good Shepherd care when the sheep are worried? Indeed he does. Would you stay up-stairs when you heard your dear baby crying? Oh! but you'd run fast to her. He says himself that he is our Father, and we are his children, and is he going to stay away off up in heaven and not care about our everyday troubles. No, just you tell him, and believe that he'll help you in some way, and he surely will. You see I can tell all about this because I've proved it. I know it is so, and it's not every minister that knows that. We had a real young minister to preach for us last Sunday; he preached about God's care for his people, and I just thought to myself, 'If you had ever been in a real tight place, my lad, and the Lord had come and helped you out, you wouldn't be standing there reading off pretty sounding words to us; you'd just tell it to us, hearty like, as if you meant it.' But here I am, going on just like a clock; I beg your pardon, Mrs. Vincent."

"Go on, Mrs. Macpherson," said Faith, "I love to hear you talk. Tell me how you came to feel so sure about things. I need to know. I am wrongly called 'Faith,' for I have scarcely any."

"Oh, I couldn't but feel sure. He hears and helps me so quick when I call to him. He has been so kind to me. When I was left alone in the world with no home and not a penny that I could call my own, I didn't know which way to turn; I had no trade, and I was not strong enough to do housework. I fretted and worried over it a spell, then it came to me all of a sudden one day that the Lord could help me if he would. I called to mind all the verses that tell how kind he is, and I just went and told him all about it, feeling as sure that he'd help me in some way as if I'd heard him say it. Sure enough he did! the very next day a lady advertised for an apprentice to learn the dressmaker's trade. I went, and she took me, and I got just in my right place. I learned fast, and in a year from that time I could fit as well as she could herself. She offered me good wages to stay and sew with her, but I was tired of shop life and wanted a bit of a home of my own, so I rented these rooms, and I have all I can do and more too. It is a nice pleasant place, I think to myself. It's cool and comfortable, even if it is two flights. You see I have a north and south window, and if there isn't a good breeze from one way there is from the other; here's my bedroom" (opening the door into a good-sized room with a large window), "blinds too. I can make it as dark as a pocket; and here's my dining-room, and kitchen all in one; here the lake water comes in; oh I tell you, I lack for nothing."

"But don't your rooms get all heated up when you cook?" Faith asked.

"Not a bit of it! See here"--calling Faith's attention to what appeared to be a small light table made of iron. "This is a gasoline stove, and the man that invented it ought to have every woman that owns one blessing him as long as he lives, for it's a jewel," and Mrs. Macpherson turned a screw and the flame flickered and glowed in one of the burners like a bright star. "Here's my fire all made, pretty soon I shall cook my dinner; over this burner I'll put my oven, and bake a potato or two nice and brown in twenty minutes or so; over the other burner I'll boil my tea-kettle and make my tea, then I'll clap on the gridiron and cook a bit of steak; nicest way in the world to cook steak, it is so quick, you know that makes steak juicy; the quicker you can cook it the better it is."

"Will it bake bread nicely?" Faith asked, growing deeply interested.

"To be sure," and Mrs. Macpherson produced a plump brown loaf. "You can see it is beautifully done; the least bit over half an hour bakes my loaves. Oh, there isn't a thing the creature won't do. I can tuck a chicken in the oven and it comes out done to a turn, or put in a joint of meat to boil and go on with my sewing, it cooks itself, you know. I can roast a turkey; last Christmas I roasted one (invited in a neighbour or two, you know), and you would have thought it came out of my mother's old-fashioned brick oven, it was done so beautifully. I can wash and iron on it too, heats the irons as fast as you can use them. It's my opinion that women wouldn't get so used up at their work if they would have these stoves; it is the heat that takes all the life and soul out of one. It is pleasant to work if you know how, and can keep cool; it is a real saving of tempers--this stove is--for if you ever noticed it, folks begin to get cross just as soon as they get well heated up over a cook-stove. No, it doesn't give out any heat, and there are no ashes, or smoke, or soot, or dirt of any kind about it, and it is cheaper to burn than coal."

"But have I not heard that gasoline is explosive?" Faith asked.

"It isn't. It will take fire if you bring it near a flame, just as alcohol will, but it can't explode. There might be a little danger of its taking fire if you filled it when burning, but nobody would be foolish enough to do that. I meant to tell you that this little stove is another proof to me that our Father pities us in our little troubles, and helps us. I used to have an iron cook-stove, and even with my little work it would heat up everything so. Just as I got all tuckered out with it, I heard of the gasoline stove, but I couldn't afford to get one, for work was rather scarce just then. I expected, though, he would send me one before long, and sure enough he did. It wasn't many days, don't you believe, till a lady came and asked me if I wanted to sew for her, and take a gasoline stove for pay; her husband was a dealer in them. You may be sure I said 'Yes' pretty quick; so I got it, and a great comfort it's been to me these three years. No, we don't plod along here with nobody to care how we get along. He cares. I believe he thought about me and sent me the stove, and I always shall."

"Well, good-bye, Mrs. Macpherson," said Faith. "I am truly obliged to you. You have cheered and helped me. I think I shall have more trust hereafter, and who knows hut I shall set up housekeeping with a gasoline stove," she added, laughingly.

"Dear heart, I wish you might."

Mrs. Vincent walked home with an idea in her head and a light in her eye that were not there when she started. Trust a woman for doing what she wants to. It did not take Faith long to lay a plan, and by the time she reached home a plan lay fair and clear before her. Once in her room she sat down and mentally inventoried her possessions. She went to her trunk and brought out her jewellery; they made a goodly array, all the birthday and holiday gifts of many years, several of them quite costly. She hesitated a little over a beautiful watch and chain, but finally laid them with the others--a fair offering at the shrine of love, retaining only a plain gold pin and the rings her husband gave her. When baby took her afternoon nap, Faith gathered up her rings, and pins, and ear-rings, and bracelets, and chains, and all the other "tinkling ornaments," made them into a package, and went with a resolute look in her eyes to Mr. Seymour's--one of the largest jewellery stores in the city. Mr. Seymour was a member of the same church, and took a fatherly interest in the young couple. Faith, with much inward trepidation, unfolded her plans to him. After careful examination he named a price for each article that made her heart bound with joy.

"As a matter of course," he explained, "we never give full value for goods bought in this way; but when a woman sacrifices her ornaments for such an object I want to bid her God-speed, and I shall give you what I think I can dispose of them for."

He counted out the fresh bills to Faith; she could have hugged him, but she only said, in low excited tones:

"Mr. Seymour, I cannot tell you how much I thank you."

She almost flew home, and then dismissing the nurse, acted in a most extraordinary manner. She danced about the room with baby, nearly squeezing the breath out of her, and laughed and cried by turns; then she did some tender serious thinking How had the clouds of the morning turned into sunshine! She recognized the hand of the dear Lord in it all; these suggestions and plans were given by him. His loving kindness was over her; she would never doubt it more. When her husband returned at evening she tried to banish from her tell-tale face all traces of exultation. This was her secret; he could not know it yet. So poorly did she succeed that he was happily surprised by finding her cheerful, instead of sad; and yet, inconsistent mortal, he began to feel slightly annoyed that she seemed to be taking the prospective separation so coolly.

"How soon can you be ready to go?" he asked in the course of the evening.

That roll of bills in Faith's pocket made her eyes dance with glee, as she answered:

"Oh, in about a fortnight; but let us not talk about that to-night, let me read you this exquisite little bit I found to-day."

"Women are queer," soliloquized Frank. "I don't believe Faith is going to feel our first separation as much as I shall myself."

Faith studied the daily newspapers diligently for a few days. "To Rent" was always the subject.

"I do believe I have found the right thing at last," she announced to baby one day, and she read aloud: "To rent at Maplewood, a cottage of four rooms, convenient to street and steam cars, pleasantly located, rent low." Another hurried consultation with the paper disclosed the fact that a train for Maplewood left in an hour. Baby was put to sleep to a hurried tune, and Faith had just time enough to reach the train. Maplewood proved to be a pretty little suburb four miles out; it was rather new, so that it seemed quite like being in the country. Green fields and hills stretched away on either side, and the one broad, quiet avenue was shaded with maples, grand old forest trees. It looked like Paradise to Faith. She soon found the cottage, a lovely nest of white and green glimmering through the trees, the smooth lawn gay with daffodils and crocuses. Vines clambered over the porch, and the sweet breath of lilies and violets distilled subtle perfume on the spring air. She stood on the porch almost afraid to ring, lest she should hear that the house was rented yesterday; but no, it was to be had, and the nice old lady who owned it wanted to rent it, and take up her abode with her daughter, was just as much delighted as Faith. So eager and enthusiastic a tenant was not found every day. The four pretty rooms--parlours, bedroom, dining-room, and kitchen--exactly suited; a bargain was soon concluded, and Faith on a homeward train, congratulating herself on the success of a part of her plan.

Many visits were made during the next few days to furniture, carpet, and china stores. One would have supposed, at the least, that Mrs. Vincent was furnishing a hotel; but it is no easy matter to take fine tastes and a small purse, and make both ends meet.

The purchases were all made at last, first and foremost the gasoline stove; then the pretty light carpets, the matting, the neat furniture, some cheap white muslin curtains for the windows, and a small store of china. The young housekeeper bought carefully; there was nothing for mere show, but when it was all arranged in the little house, and Faith's pictures hung on the white walls, there was nothing to be desired in the way of beauty or comfort--that is, in the estimation of those most nearly concerned. Meanwhile Faith had kept her secret well, going to and fro to the cottage, busy and happy as any other robin in spring-time preparing her nest.

The nest was all finished now, and Faith stood one afternoon in her kitchen door, taking a critical and comprehensive view of the whole, then turning with great satisfaction to survey the kitchen. It was a mite of a room, but Faith was very proud of it; this was to be her workshop; here cooking was to be carried on as a fine art. No ruthless Biddy should soil the purity of her new pine table, or tread out the gray matting of the floor. She took a last peep into the china closet, looked lovingly at a row of tin dishes new and shining, bestowed admiring glances at the gasoline stove, the presiding genius of the whole, then she opened the outside door into an old-fashioned garden, filled with lilacs and roses, and pinks and southernwood, and all spicy plants and fragrant herbs. She sat down to rest a few minutes, she had accomplished such wonders to-day. Daisy had been left for the day in the care of a kind old lady, and Faith, hiring a woman to help her a few hours, had been hard at work. There was a stone jar filled with golden brown loaves of delicious bread, another jar with cake light as down, a tempting bit of roast lamb sat in the refrigerator; all was in readiness for tomorrow, when the grand secret would be revealed. Faith felt so happy and satisfied; she had tried and proved the stove, it was all that it was represented to be; there was assuredly nothing, now, in the way of a home together in the country.

"Will you not come home early, and let us take a little trip on the street car out into the country?" Faith asked her husband next morning.

"Yes, indeed!" he answered, sighing. "I must make the most of my family now; only three days more left, I believe."

The unsuspecting man little though that all his worldly possessions were not long after on the way to Maplewood, and that his wife waited impatiently to take him there too.

"Now you are out on my invitation, you and baby," Faith said, as they alighted from the car at Maplewood. "You are to ask no questions, but do as you are told."

She led the way up the pleasant street, her husband following in silent wonder as she passed up the walk, turned the key of the cottage door, invited him to come in and be seated, while she passed on into the next room. A few moments, and then the door swung open, revealing that cool darkened dining-room, and Faith, with ill-concealed triumph in the tones, said:--

"Please walk out to tea, my dear; I'm sure you must be hungry by this time." He saw as through a mist the white table arranged with exquisite neatness and care, decked with flowers and spread with angel's fare, he almost thought, for he turned to Faith a bewildered look, as he said:--

"Where are we? Is this heaven? Tell me quick!"

What a merry tea-table it was; how they talked and laughed, and almost cried by turns! and even baby seemed to realise that some great event had happened, and laughed and crowed appropriately.

After tea, when they talked it all over, Frank said:--

"Who but you would have thought of all this? How happy we shall be here, and I owe it all to you!"

"You forget Mrs. Macpherson," Faith said.

"Yes, and the gasoline stove; but for that it seems this could not have been accomplished," said her husband.

"We both forget the dear Father in heaven," Faith said, in reverent tones, "that we owe everything to him alone."

By a mutual impulse they knelt down, and the husband, in a few words of prayer, consecrated this new home to the Lord, and themselves anew to his service, thereby feeling added dignity and joy in his manhood, now that "he was a priest in his own house" indeed.

So the months go on in peace and joy. Faith sings at her work, and baby plays in the garden, and Frank Vincent thinks there is but just one woman in the whole world that knows how to cook. The plan failed in no particular; the magical stove has proved itself a most efficient servant, and moreover, Faith manages to lay aside a snug sum every week.

BENJAMIN'S WIFE.

A busy, toilsome life she had led--this mother. She had reared a family; had laid some of them down to sleep in the old cemetery; had struggled through poverty, sickness, and sorrow--she and Ephraim together--always together. He brought her to no stately home that day so long ago, that she put her hand in his, and he had no stocks or bonds or broad acres, yet Mrs. Kensett had for forty years counted herself a rich woman. She possessed the true, tender, undivided heart of a good man--a love that nothing dimmed, that trials only made stronger, that hedged her life about with thoughtful care; even when grey hairs crowned the heads of both, this husband and wife rejoiced in the love of their youth. Nay, that love purified, tried, as gold is tried in the fire. In the last few years this good old couple seemed to have reached a Beulah land. They had enough laid by to support them comfortably now that their children had all flown from the home nest, and their quiet happy life flowed on without a ripple.

"Mother," Mr. Kensett had said, "I'm going to stop work now and lay by. I'm getting old and we've got enough to do us I guess as long as we stay. You can tend your flower-beds and darn my stockings, and I'll make the garden and take care of the chickens, we'll just take comfort a spell; if any body has earned the right to we have."

As often as once a week he remarked, "There's one thing I must see to, right away; I must make my will, so that if I go first you'll be sure to have the old place all to yourself. I want you to have every cent of it to do as you please with."

And "Mother" always answered, "Now, father, don't! It won't make much difference how it's fixed; it isn't anyways likely that I'll stay long behind you, we've been together so long."

There came a morning when the hale, cheery old man did not rise with the sun and step briskly about his work. The messenger came for him in the night; and when the first streak of light in the early dawn stole through his chamber window, and fell upon his face to waken him, he did not awake, he had gone--in the darkness alone with the messenger. Strange journey! Mysterious messenger! His grey coat hung over the chair where he laid it off, the garden tools stood against the fence, the house had a strange silence, the sunshine a cold glare. He who passed in and out yesterday, and worked and smiled and talked and read the news, to-day lay in the darkened parlour white, cold, and still. No, not that! To-day walked the golden streets--joined in the everlasting song, and looked upon the face of his Lord. The old Bible lay open on the stand, the psalm-book beside it, his glasses shut into the place where he sung at family worship a few hours before, and the psalm he sung--his favourite--was in the words of the quaint old version:

"I will both lay me down in peace,
And quiet sleep will take;
Because then only me to dwell
In safety, Lord, dost make."

Had he known how quiet the sleep was to be, the calm triumphant faith of the singer would not have wavered, nor would the peace with which he laid down have been less.

The will had never been made, so the old homestead must be sold and divided among them all. They met at an early day to arrange affairs. Mr. John Kensett, the eldest son, and Mrs. Maria Sinclair, the eldest daughter, were the self-appointed managers. They were both wealthy, but were just as eager to secure the small sum that would fall to them as was Hannah, another daughter, who married a poor man and had many mouths to feed. Whatever of sentiment or tender feeling these two might originally have possessed had been well rubbed out by the world. In their catechism, the answer to "What is the chief end of man?" read: To make money, to be fashionable, to please ourselves, now and here, always and everywhere.

In Benjamin, the youngest of the family, were condensed all the noble qualities and tender, poetical nature of both father and mother, while the other children brought out the unlovely characters of some distant ancestors.

"Why not give it all up to mother?" said Benjamin. "It will only be enough to keep her in comfort."

"No doubt you think that would be a most excellent arrangement," John answered, "inasmuch as you being the youngest would naturally live with her, and share the benefits, and in the end hope to fall heir to the whole, by skilful management. Pretty sharp, Benny! I see you have an eye to business."

"I am willing to go to the end of the earth and never set foot in the house again, nor get a cent," Ben exclaimed indignantly, "if mother can have a place of her own to live in comfort while she does live."

"Hold on, my dear boy! Who said she was not going to live in comfort? I believe we all have comfortable homes, and it will be much more sensible for her to live amongst us than try to keep house, and take care of this place. Women always let property run down; it will only be a trouble."

After much talk and some bickerings, it was arranged that mother had better not try to keep house, but would spend a year or two at a time around among them all.

"A year or two in a place," burst out Benjamin again. "The idea of mother running about like that, begging to be taken in, no place that she can call home; it's too bad! This place is hers, she helped to earn it, and father meant she should have it all; I heard him say so."

"Really, Benjie!" Mrs. Sinclair said, "you are getting excited. Mother does not care for the property; it would only be a trouble to her; she will live much more easily with us. You ought to see that we propose to be quite generous with mother. Of course the interest of her share will not pay her board anywhere else, but we shall take turns in keeping her, for that, besides making her presents of clothing."

"Keep her!" Ben groaned.

"Perhaps Benny proposes to set up housekeeping on his own account, soon," said John, "then mother will have a royal place to go to, and stay, no doubt."

"By the way, my dear young brother, do you think it quite the thing for you to come around finding fault with us who propose to bear all the burdens ourselves, knowing that you haven't a cent to give toward it?"

The young man restrained the bitter answer that was rising to his lips, for father's mild eye looked into his from the photograph on the wall. He made a firm resolve, though, as he walked sadly away, that the one purpose of his life should be to make a home for mother, and he would never say "burden," either.

Dear old Mrs. Kensett was so smitten, so amazed to find that her other self had gone--where she could not follow, that for days it seemed as if she sat waiting, expecting the summons to go herself.

"Surely, Ephraim would send for me," she thought in her sorrow and bewilderment. It mattered little to her, then, how or where she lived; all places were alike, since he was not in any of them, and she mechanically assented to any proposal that was made her, though she did cry out as one hurt, when John proposed an auction for the sale of household effects. "Oh, I can't," she moaned. "Your father made some of that furniture with his own hands," but the worldly-wise son, who had outgrown "foolish sentimentality," over-ruled her. It all went, the cradle in which they rocked, the old clock, the table they surrounded so many years. The rage for the antique had not yet shown itself, or John's wife and Maria, would have secured some of the old-fashioned furniture. As it was, they could not think of having their houses lumbered by it. The other two daughters were not well-to-do, and prized money more than mementos. Benjamin protested most earnestly at this sacrilegious disposal of the dear home things. He could do but little himself, as he was still pursuing his law studies, though he did bid in his father's armchair and a few other cherished articles. John touched him on the shoulder, and said, "Ben, are you crazy? What in the world will you do with a lot of old furniture?"

"You'll see," said Ben quickly.

If John could have seen his brother's next proceeding he would certainly have pronounced him a hopeless lunatic. He took the sum that fell to him and placed it in the bank to his mother's credit. "The interest money won't amount to much, mother," he said, as he handed her the certificate of deposit, "but I shall enjoy thinking that if you want some little thing you can get it without asking anybody."

Mrs. Sinclair was a woman who lived for society; she had long ago cast aside as Puritanical the wholesome restraints that had governed her girlhood. What with parties, operas and theatres, she was a very busy woman. Her young family was much neglected and she was only too glad to transfer to her old mother what little care she did give them. The restful days were gone, one would have supposed that Mrs. Sinclair had engaged, in her mother, a maid and seamstress. "It's so nice," she told her friends. "Mother takes the entire charge of them, and relieves me; children are such a responsibility." It was news to her friends, the fact that she was an anxious burdened mother.

It was hard for Mrs. Kensett to take up her life at the beginning again, to be confined day after day in a close room with noisy, fretful children, to go through the round of story-telling, tying shoes, mending tops and dolls, and minister to the thousand small wants and worries of undisciplined childhood. She had gone through all that, those chapters of her life she had considered finished and sealed up.

There is no occupation in this world more soul and body trying than the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill, and unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and has furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless.

It was not unusual when there was a heavy press of work in the house, calling for all the forces, for baby too to be bundled into grandma's room and left for hours. This worked very well while all were in good humour, for grandma loved children, but when baby writhed and fretted with aching teeth and would not be comforted, and Master Freddy resented the least correction by vigorous kicks from his stout little boots, and Miss Maude lisped, "I shan't! You ain't my mamma!"--what wonder that grandma, absorbed as she was by sad memories, should lose her patience too, and speak the sharp word that did not mend matters, while she sighed in spirit for the days that would not come back again.

The daughter remembered, too, that mother was cunning with her needle; how very convenient it became to send the mending basket to her room, "just for some work to pass the time away," and in time numberless little garments were sent there too, aprons and dresses, and she sat and stitched from morning till night when she was not tending baby. Nobody suggested a ride or a walk for her, or invited her down stairs to while away an evening when there was company.

"Mother isn't used to it," Maria said; "besides, she can't hear half that is said. She enjoys herself better alone; I suppose all old people do." This course of reasoning seemed to soothe Mrs. Sinclair's conscience when it proved troublesome, but in truth she would not have enjoyed introducing her plain-looking mother to her fashionable friends. "So old style." The old ladies she was accustomed to meet wore trail and puffs and dress caps; she might have searched long, though, to find another old face of such sweet placid dignity as her mother's.

This life in the crowded city was so new and strange and dismal. How the mother longed amid its dust and smoke for the sweet air of Hawthorn, for a sprig of lilac, or a June rose from the garden. Once in a rare while she succeeded in getting to church. It was a difficult thing to bring about, though; when nothing happened to prevent, the carriage was driven there, but apparently in that family there were more hindrances to church-going than to any other sort of going.

Now that spring had come again, Mrs. Kensett looked forward to a change of her home with pleasure; she wanted to get into the country once more, and Martha, the second daughter, had married a farmer and lived in the country; it was a long distance from Hawthorn, and she had not visited her daughter since her marriage. The pleasant home among trees and flowers and greenness that she had pictured was not there; instead, a bare frame house on a side hill without a tree or vine; there was no time to enjoy them had they been there; the long hot days were filled up with work; endless milking and baking and churning, and the unselfish mother put in her waning strength, early and late, did what she could to lighten the burden that was making her daughter prematurely old. Then the dismal winter settled down upon them, monotonous days of sleet and snow and darkness, when nothing happened from week to week to break the dreary routine, when even the Sabbaths brought no relief.

Mrs. Kensett had ever been an untiring church goer; rain or shine, she was in her place. Her son-in-law was not a Christian, and always had an excellent excuse for remaining at home, in the summer the horses were tired, or it was too hot; in the winter it was too cold, or too something. Many a dreary Sabbath the sad mother sat at her chamber window and watched the rain come down in slow, straight drizzle, repeating to herself rather than singing, as she rocked too and fro,

"How lovely is thy dwelling-place,
O Lord of hosts to me!
The tabernacles of thy grace,
How pleasant, Lord, they be!

"My thirsty soul longs vehemently,
Yea, faints thy courts to see;
My very heart and flesh cry out,
O living God for thee."

Longing meanwhile with intense desire to sit once again in the old pew, and hear the familiar tones of her pastor's voice in that far-away, pleasant village that used to be her home; now she had no home, a wanderer from house to house, and yet she was not a murmurer, her faith and love did not falter.

In due course of time she went on her pilgrim way and tarried for a time at her daughter Hannah's; a good-natured soul, who loved her mother and gave her welcome to such as she had, but she lived in a small house, with a large flock of children, undisciplined, rough, and noisy. It seemed that in the full little house there was no quiet corner for retreat, and grandma often moaned in the words of one of her dear psalms

"O that I like a dove had wings,
Said I, then would I flee,
Far hence that I might find a place
Where I in rest might be."

"After all I need all this," the old saint would say to herself. "It's a part of my dear Lord's schooling. I was having too nice a time, Ephraim and I all alone. I dare say I got out of the way and he had to bring me back. He sent me all that peaceful, comfortable time; I was very glad to have his will done when it was according to my notion; this is his will all the same, and shall not I be willing to take what he sends? He is only getting me ready.

"Soon the delightful day will come
When my dear Lord will call me home,
And I shall see his face."

Albeit the house was small, and the children noisy, this persecuted grandmother of many homes found herself dreading to leave it and find a new home with her eldest son. John's wife had always been to her a most uncomfortable sort of person; she had dreaded her not frequent visits to their home. Both were glad when they were over. Twenty years had passed since his marriage; she never seemed to get any nearer to his wife. Now the time had come to go and live with them, she shrank from it, and postponed it for weeks, but John was inflexible, he was an upright man, and bound to do his part in sharing the burden of his mother's maintenance.

Mrs. John Kensett was one of those icy women with thin lips and cold grey eyes, made up from the first without a heart--women who make a cool atmosphere about them even in the heat of summer. She was tall and stylish and handsomely dressed, and when she mounted her gold eyeglasses and through them severely looked one over, she was formidable indeed to so meek a woman as her mother-in-law. She must have married John Kensett because an establishment is more complete with a man at the head of it, for that was the chief end of her life to keep all things in perfect running order in that elegantly appointed home, and to keep abreast of the times in all new adornings and furnishings under the sun. One Scripture admonition at least she gave heed to: she looked well to the ways of her household. One might explore from garret to cellar in that house and find nothing out of place, nothing soiled, nothing left undone that should have been done. She was withal, a rigid economist in small things. Everything was kept under lock and key, and doled out in very small quantities to the servants. Her table could never merit the charge of being vulgarly loaded; the furnace heat was never allowed to run above a certain mark on the thermometer, no matter who shivered, and she had doubtless walked miles in turning gas jets to just the right point.

In this most elegant, precise, immaculate house, where everything and everybody was controlled by certain unvarying and inflexible rules, the old mother felt almost as straitened as she ever had in the small topsy-turvy one.

Her room was scarcely above shivering point, and the back windows overlooked no cheerful prospect. Here day after day she sat alone; she had food and shelter and clothes, what more could old people possibly want? At meal times her son was silent and abstracted or absorbed in his newspaper. If anybody had told him that his old mother's heart was nearly breaking for lack of loving sympathy, he would have been astonished. The faded eyes often grew dim with tears as she looked at him--the frigid, unbending man--and remembered him as he was in those first years of her married life, darling little Johnnie in white dresses and long curls, running after butterflies and picking flowers; if he only would kiss her once more, or do something to make her sure that he was Johnnie, she was hungry for a tender word from him. Ah! if mothers could see down the years that stretch ahead, it would not always be so hard to lay the little lisping ones under the ground. Was it decreed that most mothers shall be in sympathy with that other one, of whom it is written, "A sword shall pierce thine, own heart also"?

We shall never know about the wounds from those dear, self-sacrificing mothers, but they are there, even though they may strive to hide them and find excuses for the cold neglect, indifference to their comfort, impatience, and the putting them one side as if to say: "What is all this to you? It is time you were dead."

"John is busy," she would say, as she mounted the stairs to her lonely room, and he buttoned his coat and hastened away to business, without a 'good-bye' or a 'good night,' then she would draw out her knitting and knit on, often through tear-blinded eyes. Sometimes she did not hear a remark the first time and would ask to have it repeated, but the manifest impatience with which it was done always sent a pang well-likened to a sword-thrust, but the dear mother would cover the wound and think within herself, "I know it is a great trouble to talk to deaf people, I ought to keep still."

Strange that these stabs come not alone from the lost sheep of the family, but from the son who is the honoured citizen; from the daughter who shines in her circle as a woman of many virtues; from grandchildren trained up in the Sabbath-school.